Ben Shapiro and Andrew Clavin’s Ho Ho Ho-Hum episode contrasts Trump’s 2019 rally defiance—dismissing impeachment as partisan, touting $7T economic growth, and mocking Democrats like Pelosi and Jayapal—with a Christmas-themed critique of modern Christianity’s focus on doctrine over Jesus’ call to "love enemies." Clavin argues the holiday’s historical shift from paganism to Christ’s sacrifice offers eternal gifts, while Trump’s policies and rallies reinforce his base amid Democratic backlash. The episode blends political triumph with spiritual reflection, framing both as battles against perceived cultural decline. [Automatically generated summary]
At this magical Christmas season of the year, it's good to remember what Jesus told us.
He said, love your enemies.
We should ask ourselves, what the hell was that guy talking about?
After all, when one thinks of all the years in which left-wingers branded us racist and deplorable and then scolded us for being uncivil whenever we fought back, when we think of all the times leftist institutions censored us and shouted us down and even staged riots to attack us and then claimed we were a threat to American freedoms, when we remember how they made movies and wrote books and articles mocking our patriotism and trying to insulate our enemies from criticism and then suddenly dragged out the flag when it came time to overturning our votes with a specious impeachment plan.
Well, it's easy to imagine it would be fun to drag some of these people out of the Capitol or the New York Times building, whichever was closer, tar and feather them, tie them to a rail, carry them down to the Potomac or the Hudson, whichever was closer, all the while cheering at the sight of their much-deserved humiliation, and finally hurl them into the river where they belong and point and laugh as they're swept out to sea in the debris-filled water, while occasionally also pelting them with rotten fruit and vegetables, and maybe a few crumpled-up newspapers, and maybe a few crumpled-up anchor people from the news networks.
Did I already say we could point and laugh at them?
I think I did, but there's no reason we couldn't point and laugh at them some more until they're finally washed out of sight, leaving this great country they in no way deserve, better, freer, richer, more powerful, and more united than ever before.
I forgot where I was going with this.
Oh yeah, Jesus said, love your enemies.
So I guess we can't do any of that.
So, like, Merry Christmas.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunkity-doo.
Ship-shaped ipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing!
Oh, hurrah, hooray!
Oh, hooray, hurrah!
So this is it.
This is my last show before the clavenless Christmas begins.
Those of you who have Christ in your lives will, of course, receive more joy and blessing of the season than even I can deliver, as hard as that may be to imagine.
Those of you who choose to go both clavenless and Christless, well, it's been great knowing you and sorry about the dark maelstrom of despair and emotional chaos you'll be experiencing until the new year.
But whether you're a Christian or doomed, it should be a comfort to you to look back this Christmas on one of America's greatest years ever.
An economy so good it lifts everyone.
So many jobs, we may have to open our borders again just to fill the jobs.
Our military is strengthened while our wars are beginning to be drawn down.
A rejigger judiciary is more dedicated to our Constitution than to leftist moral fads.
A president has moved to defend our freedom of speech on campus and has repeatedly supported our religious freedoms while defending our most persecuted religious minority, the Jews.
And our Republican Party is reunited and re-energized by this offbeat and obstreperous, but extremely successful leader.
Our foreign policy is kind of chaotic at the moment, but that's actually an improvement over what was happening before.
It's an improvement over State Department poobahs engineering a stayed progress into a globalism that undermined our institutions and impoverished our heartland.
Chaotic, things may be, but I can't help noticing that our good friends the British are following our lead politically, and our other good friends, the Israelis, have named an entire town after our president.
We have no other good friends, and there's every reason to hope we'll come out of the chaos of this restructuring with much more realistic relationships with allies and enemies alike.
And oh yeah, another good thing.
The Democrats just impaled themselves on their own unreasoning hatred and radicalism with a partisan impeachment vote over nothing that in the real world has covered them in shame.
But let's leave the real world for a moment and take a look at the New York Times, a former newspaper.
After a psalm, the Times was the first thing I read this morning.
Here are some of the headlines expressing the paper's opinions of the news of the day.
A president impeached and a nation convulsed.
Trump has been impeached and Republicans are following him down.
Will impeachment drive Trump batty?
I laughed out loud when I read these.
This is the newspaper that claims our country was founded to defend slavery.
This is the paper that claims women's lives were better in the Soviet Union than they were here.
This is the paper that on the one hand sees racism and everyone else, but is blind to the Klan-level bigotry of their repeated attacks on whiteness.
So it should come as no surprise to me that they're reporting on a fantasy land that exists only in their own woke little heads.
Still you have to admit, it's pretty comical, because they just don't know how little we care.
They don't know how little we care about what they think of us.
They don't know how little we care what names they call us.
They don't know how little we care whether they like our great country or not.
They don't know how little we care about the self-hating delusions they try to sell each other every day.
Did they impeach the president?
Aren't they special?
I hope it made them happy.
It seems to have.
They certainly were celebrating, laughing, and taking selfies despite Nancy Pelosi's stern looks as she tried to get them to pretend to take themselves and our institutions seriously.
But I'm glad they had a good time.
And now they can pick up the New York Times and read about how the nation is convulsed by their actions and the Republicans are going down and Trump is being driven batty.
While we here in reality continue to enjoy the Trumpian peace and prosperity and recommitment to American freedom, it seems almost like a kind of weird and jolly miracle after eight years of Obama.
Eight years of the president of the world and his deep commitment to socializing and regulating us into European-style decline while encouraging our enemies with his weakness and even empowering our enemies in Iran.
I have no idea why God continues to bless this country when we can be such a bunch of self-destructive idiots sometimes.
But then I have no idea why he incarnated himself into our human mess on Christmas and died to forgive our sins.
I suppose in both cases it has something to do with the fact that he loves us and wants us to be free whether we like it or not.
But to be perfectly honest, I don't really understand that either.
Still, I'll take it.
I'll take both God's love and the incredible success of this strange and unlikely presidency.
I'll take it and I hope you'll take it.
And I hope you'll take this advice too.
As soon as this final Claven show is over, turn off the Twitter, turn off the news, turn to your family and turn to God and leave the dreadful fantasies of the media and the Democrats behind and have a Merry Christmas in this startlingly good national reality.
The left may be living in a wonderland of convulsion and depression and racism and historic whatever the hell they're up to, and they just don't know how little we care.
But I suspect they're going to find out soon enough.
So have yourself a Merry Little Christmas and we'll talk more about impeachment and the rest in just a minute.
But first, let me talk about Ring.
I have set these things up in my house and even here in New York, I can see my house.
I can look through my ring doorbell and see if anybody's there.
I have presents that are still being delivered to the house and I can make sure no porch pirates are out there taking them away.
I can make sure they're being brought safely in.
It's not only does it make you safer to have a ring doorbell and a ring system protecting your home, but it makes you feel safer, which is priceless.
I mean, that's a wonderful thing itself.
Well, Ring helps you stay connected to your home from anywhere.
So a package delivery, surprise visitor, no, nothing, anything like that.
You can check on it.
You can talk to a person ringing your doorbell.
You can see who they are and find out who they are, and it gives you some much-needed holiday peace of mind.
And as a listener, you have a special holiday offer, too.
You get a Ring starter kit, which is available right now.
It has a Ring video doorbell, too.
I have one of these.
They're incredibly nice.
Motion-activated floodlight cam, and the starter kit has everything you need to start building a ring of security around your home no matter what the holiday season brings.
With Ring, even if you're across the country, you're always home.
Just go to ring.com forward slash clavin.
That's ring.com forward slash Clavin.
Additional terms may apply, but the only term you need is how to spell Clavin, which is K-L-A-V-A-N.
There are no E's in Clavin.
Also, if you haven't finished buying Christmas presents, get the art of making sense.
It's my little pamphlet of speeches and articles that I wrote this year.
It's getting great reviews, although they wouldn't, somebody tried to put up a review calling me the new C.S. Lewis, which I greatly appreciate, but they wouldn't, somehow Amazon wouldn't let them put it up there.
But still, you can get the book and you can get it on Kindle and it's priced cheaply and you can put it in a stocking and everything.
So the rest of us are celebrating this peace and prosperity that has come with the Trump administration.
There's just no question about it.
This has been great.
But Nancy Pelosi left her district in San Francisco, stepped over the homeless people littering the sidewalks.
Maybe her chauffeur carried her to a car so she wouldn't step in the human feces all over the place or maybe pierce her foot on one of the syringes lying all over San Francisco.
And she went to the House to lead the impeachment of the president.
And you know, you know, this was a very, very solemn moment.
You could tell because every Democrat said so.
We gather today under the dome of this Temple of Democracy to exercise one of the most solemn powers that this body can take.
It's with solemn purpose today that I vote to impeach.
Madam Speaker, it is with a solemn sense of duty that I write.
Madam Speaker, as we take this solemn, necessary step of impeaching President Trump.
I rise on this solemn occasion.
Impeaching the president is one of the most solemn and consequential.
I cast this solemn vote for the many individuals in my district.
Members of Congress swear a solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and today we fulfill our oath.
Madam Speaker, I rise with a heavy heart to support this resolution.
I rise today with a heavy heart.
It is with a heavy heart, but a resolved one.
Madam Speaker, it is with a heavy heart and a profound sense of the gravity of this moment that I rise today in support of the impeachment.
Madam Speaker, I rise with a heavy heart.
The two most difficult votes any member of Congress ever has to cast to vote to go to war are to impeach.
Today, as Speaker of the House, I solemnly and sadly open the debate.
Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho It's taking it real hard.
Yeah, they were solemn.
You could tell how solemn they were.
And then, you know, they had two counts of impeachment.
One was something and the other was something else.
Neither of them was a crime.
Neither of them was an impeachable offense.
But there they were.
When the first one, when they won the first vote and they actually got the impeachment, here was the reaction.
Article 1 is adopted.
The question is our adoption of Article 2.
Not everyone got the message.
Schiff, Adam Schiff, and the House Intel Democrats were seen out celebrating and drinking at a fancy D.C. restaurant, Charlie Palmer.
And here's Rashida Tlaib before the vote.
Hey, everyone.
I am on my way to the United States House floor to impeach President Trump.
On behalf of my incredible district, 13 District Shrine.
If she were smiling anymore, she would break her nasty face.
I would grin on this woman's face.
The Washington Post, the WAPO reporter Rachel Bade, sent out this picture of them all celebrating and laughing with a tweet that said, Mary impeachments.
Mary impeachments.
And then when everybody said, oh, so the Washington Post is just basically an anti-Trump vehicle where democracy dies of boredom, she pulls it down and she says, well, everybody misunderstood it to mean exactly what it obviously meant.
So this is very, very solemn impeachment.
Oh, and now Pelosi, this is unbelievable.
Pelosi is saying she may not hand the rules of impeachment over to the Senate because she wants to be able to negotiate with the Senate over the rules, which she has no right to do.
The Senate can make its own rules.
Just like the House made these incredibly unfair rules where the president couldn't call any witnesses or they could only call the witnesses they said he could call.
And so she wants to hold this up.
And on top of this, she gave a press conference today.
And when they asked her, she said, I'm not taking any more questions on impeachment.
So this is this solemn emergency, the fate of the House, the fate of the nation.
Western civilization is at stake.
It's all, oh my gosh, it's such a terrible, terrible thing.
But we're not talking about it.
And I may not send it over to the Senate because it's better politically.
I mean, who do they think they're fooling?
You know, I have now spoken personally to three separate people who said I was a never-Trumper, but I'm voting for him now because this is absurd.
That's a lot of people for one person to know who say this stuff.
And I haven't talked to that many people.
So it's pretty wild what I think they're doing.
I just think it is amazing.
So this whole process was embarrassing.
Let's begin with Pelosi, her opening statement.
I mean, these are the same, just remember, these are the same people who, when George W. Bush was trying to win the war on terror, first supported him, then deserted him, said, oh, you know, it's this nationalism, this patriotism, these flagpins, it all stinks of Hitlerian insanity.
Here's Nancy Pelosi's opening statement.
This morning and every morning, when we come together, members rise and pledge allegiance to the flag.
Every day, all across America, children in school, members of the military, officials and those civically engaged also pledge allegiance to the flag.
Let us recall what that pledge says.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic, to the republic for which it stands.
One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
The republic for which it stands is what we are here to talk about today.
A republic if we can keep it.
We gather today under the dome of this Temple of Democracy to exercise one of the most solemn powers that this body can take, the impeachment of the President of the United States.
She actually goes in to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Impeachment Rhetoric00:07:23
I mean, she actually says it on the unbelievable.
And then, and what I love is the press taking her seriously on it.
And MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell, and Chris Matthews are discussing this.
Nancy Pelosi is a woman of a person of primary colors.
You see it.
If she's not wearing white, she's wearing bright colors.
She's certainly always well appointed, beautifully arrayed, if you will.
She's wearing black today.
And that is a symbolic expression of how somberly they are taking this.
It's sacramental.
It's sacramental.
And you can talk about the politics of it.
It's no question that Nancy Pelosi came to this reluctantly.
Oh, what a bunch of crap.
It's unbelievable that they could say it's sacramental.
It's sacramento, I think, maybe.
It's as corrupt as Sacramento.
I think that's what he was trying to say.
It's sacramental.
It's like the mass.
It was like taking the body and blood of Christ.
That's how seriously they took it.
Let's listen to some of the rhetoric that came down on the floor.
I mean, it's amazing to me when I say they don't know how much we don't care, they don't understand how little we care about this.
If they are actually sitting there thinking that anybody besides the most virulent MSNBC watcher is sitting there going, yeah, it's Sacramento, they were really solemn.
I really believe Hassan.
That's nuts.
But let's go to the House.
Let's talk about some of the rhetoric that we heard.
Jackie Speyer is from California.
And, you know, I have to say, when you remember that Schiff and Pelosi are both from California, Gerald Nadler is from New York.
It's a reason why we need the Electoral College.
It keeps us, it reminds us of why we want to keep the Electoral College, because if everything were California and New York, everything would be these people.
I mean, really, it really is that these people have left their districts that are littered with homeless people, that are littered with drugs, that have people crapping on the sidewalks in front of people that are starting, some of these places are starting to think about making laws where on your private property, you have to leave a place for the homeless people their policies caused.
And when you look at the rest of the country, which is coming back to life as Trump brings jobs back to America, there's just no question that he's done that.
When you look at that and you just think like this dream world that they're living in, they have to sell it at this incredible high rate because otherwise people are going to look at them blinking and saying, wait, this is about a phone call to Ukraine?
Is that what we're talking about?
Here's Jackie Speyer from California.
My father fled Nazi Germany for America because he saw what happened when a despot became untethered.
He fled because he believed in democracy and the rule of law and the right to vote.
So Donald Trump is Hitler, except they never impeach.
I wonder why they never impeached Hitler.
I'm just trying to think about, oh yeah, because he was Hitler.
Because you can't impeach Hitler because he'll kill you because he shut down the Congress.
He basically took over.
He became the dictator of the country.
And they keep saying this is happening with Trump, except somehow it just never happens.
Somehow he never disobeys a court order.
Somehow he never passes a law that limits our freedom of speech, rather the opposite.
Somehow he never comes and carries this Jackie spear away.
I mean, where is the Hitler that you can attack like that and get away with it?
There is none.
He's just the president of the United States.
You know, he's a loudmouth, he's obstreperous, he's not always nice.
All those things are true.
But other than that, he's doing a terrific job and he is just an American president.
Let's take another one, Pramila Jayapal from Washington.
Without that, we are no longer a democracy.
We are a monarchy or a dictatorship.
And so today, to uphold my oath to Constitution and country, I will vote to impeach Donald J. Trump.
You know, this is a really interesting thing because she says without impeachment, if we don't impeach him, we're in a monarchy or a dictatorship.
And obviously, until they impeached him, we were obviously in a dictatorship and a monarchy.
So we've all been saved.
And whew, that was close.
I mean, I was really missing my democracy where our votes counted and they didn't overturn them for no reason whatsoever.
But now that we've been saved, they're not turning the impeachment over to the Senate and they don't want to have a trial because they don't want to be humiliated by actual witnesses who might debunk everything they've said.
But we're living in this.
But it does remind me of the fact that the Republicans, before Trump put some steel in their spine, during the Obama administration, the Republicans announced that they were never going to impeach Obama.
They were never going to impeach Obama.
So they basically set him free to do whatever he wanted to do.
That Republican Party is gone now, and it's gone because of Donald Trump.
That Republican Party that dithered about immigration, that Republican Party that said, oh, we'll never impeach Obama because they were afraid.
They were afraid of the press.
They were afraid of being called racist.
That's why.
That's why they said they would never do it.
They were afraid of being called racist by the press.
That party that trembles at the sight of Chuck Todd is gone.
That party is gone because Donald Trump, in his mean way, in his obstreperous way, in his loudmouth way, has put the press back on their heels where he belongs.
And of course, just for over-the-top rhetoric, let's not forget the always reliable Hakeem Jeffries from New York again.
There are some who cynically argue that the impeachment of this president will further divide an already fractured union.
But there is a difference between division and clarification.
Slavery once divided the nation, but emancipators rose up to clarify that all men are created equally.
Thank you so much, Hakeem, because this was like slavery.
Until this moment, this was until they had this impeachment.
This was like slavery.
I mean, it really was.
It was just, it was kind of, you know, the people were working without pay.
You know, they're out in the fields being whipped.
I mean, it really, until this moment, when they did this thing that they're not sending to the Senate because it's such an emergency and they won't even talk, they won't even answer questions about it because it's so historic.
It's so historically historical.
It's so historically historical that it's historic how historic it is.
And yet they can't be bothered to answer questions about it because it's too, I don't know why.
Because it's nothing, because it's nonsense.
I guess that's it.
But I just want to be fair.
I just want to be fair before I move on to talk about some of the other things that were said, and especially to talk about the press.
I just want to be fair.
There was a little overreach on the right as well.
Here's Barry Lautermilk from Georgia.
Before you take this historic vote today, one week before Christmas, I want you to keep this in mind.
When Jesus was falsely accused of treason, Pontius Pilate gave Jesus the opportunity to face his accusers.
During that sham trial, Pontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus than the Democrats have afforded this president in this process.
All right.
I'm willing to concede that Trump is, Trump is not Hitler, but I'm willing to concede he's not Jesus either.
So he had a little bit.
Quip Toothbrush Debate00:13:07
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It's unbelievable.
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Let me just play for you the one speech that I loved more than anyone.
This is Russ Filcher from Idaho, who basically channeled Michael Knowles in his speech on impeachment.
In a day-heavy and verbal debate, I choose to use my time to enumerate in detail every high crime and misdemeanor committed by the President of the United States.
I will do so now.
So he just stood there for 30 seconds and said absolutely nothing because the president has not committed any crimes.
And he really has not committed any crimes.
I mean, they haven't, they didn't withhold aid from Ukraine.
You know, when Ukraine first annexed Crimea, Bush put sanctions on them.
And then Obama took them off and sent the reset button saying Bush overreacted.
And when Putin then realized he could invade Ukraine and invaded Ukraine, Obama, what did Obama send?
He sent them like coloring books.
I mean, he didn't send them anything.
You know, he sent them little, you know, SpongeBob tie clips.
You know, he didn't send them anything.
It was Trump.
It was Trump who sent them the lethal aid they needed to fight the Russians, missiles and sniper rifles.
And he didn't withhold the aid.
It got held up.
The budget office says it got held up for normal reasons.
He mentioned that they should investigate Biden.
That was probably, you know, he has a big mouth.
He says too much.
That was probably going over the line.
They're impeaching him for that.
No aid was held up.
No quid pro quo.
They said quid pro quo.
Then when that didn't go with their focus group, they changed it to bribery.
When they couldn't make that case, they changed it to something and then something else.
It's an embarrassment.
It is an embarrassment.
They are wrapped in shame, but they don't know it yet.
They don't know it because they have created this.
Maybe Pelosi knows it.
But I think most of the Democrats are living in a fantasy world where they get patted on the shoulder for their participation in the government as a participation trophy for being in government from the press.
And then, and then the press, who thinks they're still living in the world where they were the information we got, they think they're still living in the pre-internet world where the Daily Wire doesn't exist and where all the other right-wing voices don't exist and where facts come out whether they like it or not.
They can't understand why the polls are going Trump's way.
Trump's approval rating is going up.
Support for impeachment is going down and they can't get it.
Here's Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell, the worst affected.
Here they are on, I think this is on NBC, yeah, because there's no difference now between NBC and MSNBC.
It's all one big liberal place where they, you know, as long as they can keep Harvey Weinstein from being investigated and protect Bill Clinton, they're happy.
They can't understand what's going on.
Here they are discussing it hilariously.
This is the world that we have.
You know, there's the factual debate and then there's the political reality.
And as this is it, I mean, it's bizarre to think that he's getting cheers on Battle Creek, Michigan on the same night he is literally getting impeached on the floor of the House.
It is bizarre, but historians will make more sense of it than we can right now.
All right, Andrew Mitchell, Chuck, mentioning that polling, the polling continuing to show nothing has really fundamentally changed.
So will actual impeachment change anything?
We don't know, because to be totally honest, one would have thought that over all of these weeks and the testimony and the arguments on the other side that something would have shifted.
But the poll numbers that we have tonight that came out just this evening are exactly identical to the same polling we had in October within the margin of error.
At this point, this is going to play out across America throughout this election.
Because it's going to be decided by the election.
You know, it's a long time before the election, and this may not cost the Democrats as much as it should cost them because it's such a long time and Trump can make mistakes and he does make mistakes.
But, you know, if you remember, if the last vote had come right after the Kavanaugh debacle for the Democrats, I think we would have held the House.
I think Republicans would have held the House.
So it's still a long time.
But I think this does do more to the Democrats than they can think.
I love also Truck Todd and Andrew Mitchell can't understand why people aren't sold on this complete bunkum.
But I love the explanation of political commentator Michael Smirkoonish is talking about this, and he's got it all figured out.
I'm most interested to see whether the result of today and tonight is a momentum shift.
I have to believe that there were more eyes on the proceedings that have just ended than at any other point in this process.
But here's the question that needs to be answered.
Why has public support for impeachment actually declined as the hearings have played themselves?
And his approval is up.
And his approval is up.
But with regard to the decline, I mean, you can look at the Marquette study of Wisconsin, most critical state probably of all 50 in the election.
The Gallup survey that came out today.
My own theory is that most Americans, many Americans, in the end, because it got so damn nasty, just decided to chalk this up to partisan bickering.
Pinnacle of partisanship.
You asked Maggie, what's the headline in the future?
That would be mine.
I don't think that this was born of partisanship.
I think this was born of his conduct.
And frankly, the underlying facts are pretty straightforward in the end.
But it was very hard for people who are working for a living and raising kids and so forth to follow all the names and the places and the dates.
You funny little people with your funny little jobs couldn't possibly understand the complexities that Michael Smirkonish or whatever his name is, understands.
You just couldn't, you can't get it.
You know who's the one person who I think actually understands this, who actually understands the atmosphere that's going on?
I think it's Donald Trump.
And I'll talk about that in just a second.
But you know what?
We are not going to break away today.
It's the last Claven show of before Christmas.
And we want to keep as many of you on the tether before you plunge into the vast empty darkness of the Clavenless holiday.
But it's all the more reason for you to subscribe.
And one more reason to subscribe is we have a holiday deal for you.
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Don't wait.
So Donald Trump, as they said, is in Michigan.
He's in Battle Creek, Michigan.
And while they're impeaching him, he gives his own rally as if the whole thing isn't happening because I think he really understands how little we care.
He thinks he actually gets the fact that we don't care.
So let's play Trump cut number 17, where he tells them this.
It doesn't really feel like we're being impeached.
The country is doing better than ever before.
We did nothing wrong.
We did nothing wrong.
And we have tremendous support in the Republican Party like we've never had before.
Nobody's ever had this current support.
You know, it's funny.
I've been making fun of this impeachment from the beginning because it was like the Russia thing blew up in their face and they tried obstruction of justice, that blew on the other.
And then they finally, oh, we'll take this phone call and hear four lines from this phone call and we'll make a scandal of it.
That should work.
Why isn't anyone believing us?
I don't understand.
But, you know, just to be serious for a moment, it really is wrong.
They have made themselves a laughingstock, but that makes our House of Representatives a laughingstock.
And they've made impeachment a laughingstock.
It means our government has no gravitas.
It means all this rhetoric that they use has no meaning.
One of the things I've complained about is the way they take Trump out of context.
I mean, this is really important.
Victor Davis Hansen wrote a really good book about this, The Case for Trump.
But they say that Trump is mean, but for how many years have they been calling us names racist and sexist and evil and all this stuff?
And they say Trump is vulgar.
But who gave us this culture of vulgarity?
Who gave us like rap culture and the filth everywhere and the foul language that people use even in the workplace?
It wasn't Trump who did that.
Trump is the product of that.
He's the end result of that.
He's not the one who created it.
It's the left who created it.
Now they say, oh, he's lowered the tone of government.
You can make that argument, no question about it.
But Trump is Hitler, so we're impeaching Trump is slavery.
So we're impeaching.
They've lowered the tone of government by doing this so incredibly.
And Trump really is giving it to them.
And I think people are going to start to hear him.
Let's take Cut 19.
Through their depraved actions today, crazy Nancy Pelosi's House Democrats have branded themselves with an eternal mark of shame.
And it really is.
It's a disgrace.
You know, he's right.
And the final thing is just one more thing.
You know, it's like the leftist news media, they say, we don't understand, we with our funny little people, with our funny little jobs.
We don't have the brainpower to understand.
But this is, we picked Trump for exactly this reason.
We picked him to tell them what we think of them.
That is why we did it.
They say, well, he's threatening the press.
No, we're threatening the press.
And we're not threatening them with censorship.
We're threatening them with exposure.
We're threatening to tell them who we are and that we know who they are.
And here is Trump, one last cut of Trump at his rally, talking about the voters, Cut 18.
With today's illegal, unconstitutional, and partisan impeachment.
The do-nothing Democrats, and they are do-nothing.
All they want to do is focus on this.
What they could be doing are declaring their deep hatred and disdain for the American voter.
It's just true.
It is just true.
We all feel it.
And he knows we feel it.
Let's just take a real quick look at what was going on during the impeachment.
11 more federal judges selected by Trump were confirmed.
The administration moved to allow cheaper Canadian drugs to be sold in America, which would bring down prescription drug prices while the Democrats are doing absolutely nothing about this.
And unemployment is now so low, truly, it's so low that it's gone lower than experts thought was absolutely possible.
So on this day of impeachment, just to show them, just to show them how little we care, I think we should close out this segment with the Trump happiness montage.
We're going to win so much.
We're going to win at every level.
We're going to win economically.
We're going to win with the economy.
We're going to win with military.
We're going to win with health care and for our veterans.
We're going to win with every single facet.
Winning With The Economy00:03:21
We're going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning.
Yay!
You say, please, please, it's too much winning.
We can't take it anymore.
I feel pretty.
Oh, so pretty.
I feel pretty and witty and gay.
We have to keep winning.
We have to win more.
That seems like a big Christmas screw you to the Democrats and the press.
Well, you know, you hear what you want to hear.
Let me talk a little bit about some easier stuff.
Let me give you my list of Christmas movies.
There are all these lists of Christmas movies, and they're all incorrect.
So let me correct the Christmas movie list.
The five best Christmas movies are these.
The five best movies is the Christmas Carol called Scrooge with Alistair Sim.
That is the best Christmas movie ever made and will continue to be forever.
I think it's 1951.
You can't get the wrong one because this is the one.
I think It's a Wonderful Life still applies, still is a contender.
It's a Wonderful Life is the opposite of the Christmas Carol, right?
In the Christmas Carol, a greedy man finds out what his life did to people, whereas in It's a Wonderful Life, a generous man finds out what the world would be like without his life.
They're mirror images of themselves, and they both of them change.
Both of them show how the internal change changes everything.
The Bishop's Wife, if you have never seen The Bishop's Wife, you've got to get the original with David Niven.
And who is the other woman?
David Niven and Carrie Grant is in it as well.
And Loretta Young.
That's the one I'm thinking about.
That's about the angel who comes down to help a bishop and starts to be attracted to the bishop's wife.
Terrific story.
The Holly and the Ivy, a serious British drama that sort of shows you how family and Christmas and culture overcome even the rifts in a family.
It's a very, very beautiful and serious and intelligent movie.
And Remember the Night is the one that nobody ever thinks about.
That's Fred McMurray and Barbara Stanwick and just a really interesting offbeat little Christmas movie.
Funny Christmas movies, Home Alone cracked me up, I gotta say.
The slapstick stuff in that just killed me.
Jingle All the Way, it's the only Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy that is really funny and it really is funny and it really is fun and uplifting.
And Christmas story, I could talk about Gene Shepard forever.
He was like, in my day, he was just the kind of offbeat broadcaster that only the in-crowd knew about.
Everybody knew, everybody knew about my father.
Everybody knew about John Gambling, but only the in-crowd knew about Gene Shepard and this is his story and it still remains hilarious, especially Darren McGavin as the father.
And romantic ones, Love Actually, it's a good movie.
I'm sorry, those who think it's the worst movie ever, just putting it on a show, it's a very good movie.
It's very touching.
It's got some great stories in it, some good writing in it.
The holiday is one that doesn't get enough play.
That was a really nice little kind of hallmark, you know, cut above the hallmark level.
White Christmas is, of course, a terrible, it was the greatest terrible movie ever made.
It's an awful movie, but it is just great, and it's rewatched.
We watch it again and again and again.
And of course, Die Hard, which is, according to the Gospels, is Jesus' favorite Christmas movie of all.
The Light of Christmas00:05:50
All right, let me end with this, a final reflection on Christmas.
And before I let you go into the maelstrom, a lot of people complain that Christmas is really a pagan holiday that's been refitted for Christianity, and that's true, but to me, that's a feature, not a bug.
For me, the birth of Christ, the incarnation of God's logos, the moment that the God we can't see becomes seeable and the God we can't understand becomes understandable.
That was like a spiritual atom bomb going off in history.
After the first explosion, there's all sorts of devastating effects.
You get the resurrection, you get healing, you get miracles, you get crazy behavior, people sitting on poles and handling snakes and speaking in tongues.
But soon, the radiation, or in this case, the radiance, spreads out and becomes part of everything.
It permeates everything and it transforms everything into a vehicle for itself.
Everything becomes irradiated or radiant with the good news of the coming of Christ.
History becomes different.
History is now the events that led up to the first coming of Christ.
That's how we re-understand it and how Jesus taught us to re-understand it.
And everything after that becomes events leading up to the second coming of Christ.
Religion is transformed.
People don't think about it this way, but this is the way I see it.
Religion used to be an endless series of pleading prayers and sacrifices that man made to God, and suddenly it becomes instead the vehicle of the good news about the one sacrifice that God made for man.
Religions still have rules and they have doctrines and they have theories, but really what's important about all those things is how well and how much they carry the good news.
It's the good news that matters.
Christianity is not a religion.
It is good news.
And the different religions, as far as I'm concerned, are just vehicles for carrying that good news.
And, as I started by saying, holidays are transformed.
Holidays used to be brute celebrations of physical events like the winter solstice when the light of the sun begins to return.
Now, it's a celebration of a spiritual miracle in which the light of the world begins to shine on the hearts and minds of men.
It has transformed a pagan holiday into a Christian holiday.
That's a good thing.
But to celebrate the birth of Christ is only to celebrate the beginning of the story.
The birth of Christ, just like the birth of everybody, is only the beginning.
A friend of mine this year made a wonderful observation about the Nicene Creed.
This is the creed that you say, and I think believe the Catholic and certainly the Episcopal Church, which tells you what the basic thing you believe as a Christian.
And one of the parts of it says, we believe Jesus came down from heaven.
He became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man.
And he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate.
He suffered and was buried the third day he rose again according to the scriptures.
It's a section of the Nicene Creed.
And my friend pointed out, and other people have pointed this out before, but this really grabbed me.
He pointed out that Christ's life, the things he said and did, are completely missing from the Creed.
It goes right from him's incarnation to his crucifixion.
And my friend said, that's like giving us the bread of the sandwich, but leaving out the meat of the sandwich.
And whoever heard of a bread sandwich?
And I thought about this because I sometimes fear that a lot of us believe in Christianity in this way.
We're very swift to defend and preach the doctrines of our particular church, but we're slow to go back and puzzle over what Jesus was actually trying to tell us.
He was a preacher.
Why did he come?
What was he trying to say?
And I don't mean taking phrases out of context as a way of attacking people that we disagree with.
I'm talking about the logos of God trying to teach you and me how to align ourselves with him, right?
Jesus said stuff.
He told us to do stuff.
He said, judge not lest ye be judged.
And I think he meant exactly what he was saying.
He said, let him who is without sin throw the first stone.
And I don't think he was speaking code.
I think he meant exactly that too.
He said, love God, love your neighbor, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven who causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good alike.
He sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous.
In other words, God loves his human creation, and he wants you to act like his child and love it too.
I don't think Jesus said any of these things so we can feel bad when we fail to do them.
And I don't think he said them so that we can dissect them and parse them and find ways to get out of doing them.
And I definitely don't think he said them so we can accuse other people of not doing them.
I think Jesus said these things because he knew when you attune your heart to the immensity of God's love, you start to become joyful and you become more joyful every day.
And obviously I've said this before, but it's worth saying again.
When I say that, when I say joyful, I don't mean you get happy.
Happiness comes and goes.
It comes and goes according to the happy or sad things that happen to you.
I mean you become abundantly alive.
You become vitally present.
You become crazily glad to be here even in this veil of tears.
I love Christmas because what was once a celebration of the light of the sun and the abundant life it gives the earth is now a celebration of the light of the world and the abundant life he offered to each and every one of us.
Not just in his birth, because his birth was only the beginning, and not just in his death, though his death was never the end, but his life, his miracles, his words.
These are the contents of the incarnation.
These are the gifts of Christmas.
And while heaven and earth will pass away, those words will never pass away.
The gift is for you, and no one can take it from you.
So, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Rejoice, rejoice evermore, and have a wonderful, wonderful Merry Christmas.
The Gifts of Christmas00:01:17
Survivors will gather here in the new year.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Have a wonderful Merry Christmas.
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